The Tissue Bank Core Facility will be involved in the harvesting and distribution of prostatic tissue to members of the SPORE grant. The Tissue Bank Core Facility has the following aims: (1) Maximize the amount of tissue harvested while still enabling thorough pathologic assessment of the specimen. (2) Obtain as pure tissue as possible (i.e. tumor composed of >75% tumor nuclei, or benign prostate tissue without contamination by grossly inapparent infiltrating cancer. (3) Obtain tumors with a wide spectrum of grade, stage and histologic subtype. (4) Obtain different types of benign prostate tissue (transitional and peripheral zone). (5) Harvest tissue containing putative precursor lesions of prostate cancer (prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia). (6) Coordinate the distribution of tissue to varies members of the SPORE grant and eventually to researchers outside of the institution. Each will consist of tumor, benign peripheral zone, benign transition zone, seminal vesicles, and tissue adjacent to tumor. Novel techniques have been developed to harvest the greatest amount of tissue without compromising the pathologic assessment of the specimen. Accurate pathologic staging and evaluation of margins of resection will be necessary for adjuvant therapeutic trials and for correlation of various investigational parameters with tumor biologic behavior. Frozen samples of prostate and related tissue have been collected from a total of 658 individuals undergoing surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital as of 1/12/95. In 1993 we set up a system whereby researchers can obtain fresh, sterile prostate tissue, as well as frozen prostate tissue. Because only a relatively small amount of cancer tissue can be harvested for research use from each prostate, tissue is provided to researchers on a weighted rotating basis. Using this system, 381 fresh tissue samples have been provided to 14 separate individuals from 187 separate patients since we began keeping track of this with prostate tissue bank sample number 338. Priority has been given to the viral transduction studies because of their need for large tumor samples, with the remaining researchers roughly at par. Frozen tissue has been used for mutation studies, allelic loss studies, in situ hybridization studies, in situ PCR studies, immunochemistry studies, and telomerase studies by several (over ten) separate research groups.